


midnight to four am

by sweetestsight



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: (kind of), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Asexual Character, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Telepathy, i swear though theres plenty of fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:15:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24585958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetestsight/pseuds/sweetestsight
Summary: Bondmarks were just a part of everyday life. Nearly every adult's arm bore the name of their bondmate surrounded by three rings, proving that person was perfect for them in mind, body and soul. By age fifteen ninety-six percent of the population knew their soulmate's name, and forty-eight percent of couples married before the third mark even formed at age twenty-five.That was how it worked for most people, anyway. Sometimes things weren't quite so simple.
Relationships: John Deacon/Brian May/Freddie Mercury/Roger Taylor
Comments: 52
Kudos: 73





	1. Brian

He remembers sitting on his mother’s lap as a child and tracing the mark on her forearm. 

She was pregnant again, the first time after Brian had been born, and Brian remembers she was only barely showing. She hadn’t been happy. The whole house had been tinged with worry, and it’s impossible to know if he remembers it that way or if the memories are just tainted with what he knows now had been coming. 

It hadn’t mattered at the time. He was going to have a baby sister. 

And at the time not even _that_ had mattered terribly, because in that moment he’d known he was in the last few months when he, Brian May, a knobby toddler, was at the center of attention. He’d known just enough to savor that fact. 

“What’s it say?” he asked, tracing the three circles on her arm and the name inside. 

“You already know what it says,” she chides. “Can you read it out to me?”

“No, I can’t.” 

She’d laughed gently. “I’ll read it with you. H-A-R-O-L-D, see? It says Harold May. That’s Dadda’s name, and it means that he and I are perfect for each other.” She taps the outermost ring circling the name, a shimmering gold. “In body,” she says, then moves to the next, this one blue, “in mind,” she moves to the innermost, “and in soul.” Her finger lingers on that ring for a beat longer, and Brian watches the silver of it shine. 

“I don’t have a name on my arm,” he complained, tugging her sleeve and feeling his eyes well up. It wasn’t fair.

She’d laughed again and kissed the top of his head. “Patience, love. When you’re older it’ll come. Besides, there’s no rush to find your soulmate. You have one person out there who’s perfect for you, and they’ll be waiting for you, too.” 

  


Roger had come to him in the fall. 

The sun was still hot, the air a little stale after long stagnant months in the city. Brian and Tim had held auditions in the basement of the music building rather than the first floor just to chase down a comforting touch of damp coolness. It was all for naught. When Roger walked in it felt like he brought the sunshine with him.

Brian hadn't noticed anything; not at first. Well, that's a lie. He hadn't noticed anything _peculiar_. Roger was a fantastic drummer. He had a wonderful stage presence and undeniable charisma. He was beautiful in a way that men weren't, generally speaking. Brian was half smitten that first day, but then so was Tim. So was everyone who met Roger, he'd come to find out. 

The way he moved, though. That in particular stood out. 

When he walked Brian could see his path and trace his movements before Roger had even made them. When he played Brian could almost see where his arms had been, the air rippling in his wake nearly imperceptibly. It was mesmerizing. 

“He's quite something,” Brian had muttered in a half-drunken haze to Tim one night after a show, watching Roger dance, his hips gyrating to the music, air moving out of his way and waist begging to be held. Brian didn't know how he knew it but he did: his hands would fit there perfectly. Their bodies would fit perfectly together. 

Tim hadn’t said a word in response but had looked at Brian sideways as he took a long sip of beer, and that's when Brian first doubted that his feelings were as universal as they seemed.

The thought was confirmed a week later. 

They were backstage after a show, hair sweaty and makeup smudged and clothes rumpled, and Brian was sure he looked a mess but Roger carried debauchery well with his bedroom eyes and the confident strength of his shoulders. Brian couldn't take his eyes off him as they shared the mirror. Roger’s eyes found his first in their reflections, then in person as they turned to face each other, and the between one breath and the next their lips met. 

He'd like to say it was elegant. He really would. 

Roger was easy—not easily seduced, not easily charmed—Roger was easy to just _get_ , to fall into the empty spaces of, to click with utterly simply. They didn’t always get along. They argued more often than not. Sometimes they played off key and off beat.

Every time they started walking together they fell into perfect sync, though—every single time, without fail.

Roger embodied a sort of easy confidence that Brian craved and was entranced by in equal measure. The way he played, the way he talked, the way he fucked; all of it was so easy, and it was as beautiful to watch as it was to be a part of.

He never hid his mark, not even in the early days. Not once.

“What are you staring at?” he’d huffed at Brian.

It must’ve been less than a full week into this shaky thing called Smile, Roger finishing out the little trio that Tim and Brian had dreamed of for so long. Tim wasn’t there yet, Roger and Brian the only two in the little makeshift studio crammed into the basement of the engineering building. The air didn’t circulate well down there, and Roger was in nothing but a tank top because of it.

His soulmark was on full display.

“If you’ve got a problem with it, spit it out,” Roger had snapped when Brian hadn’t responded.

Brian had balked. “No, absolutely not. It’s not that, it’s just—”

“What?” Roger hissed.

Brian wordlessly rolled up his sleeve, revealing his two entwined marks for the first time.

Roger squinted at the name inside the blue circle of his mindmark. He turned and looked at his own soulmark, bearing the exact same name in simple black typeset. He’d snorted out a laugh.

“Common name, I guess,” Roger said, as if nothing had happened.

Brian blinked at him.

Roger just went back about his business, sitting down on his drum stool and beginning the little drum rolls that he always played to tune the toms. Brian stared at him until he couldn’t bear being ignored any longer, and then he snapped.

“You’re not going to say anything?”

Roger looked at him quizzically. “About what?”

“About—about—”

“What, that it’s a bloke’s name?”

“They’re _both_ blokes’ names!”

“Not my fault I couldn’t tell with the other one,” Roger said. “What, like it’s such a big deal? Mine’s a bloke, too.”

“No, Roger, I mean…” he trailed off, hoping Roger would get it, but Roger just squinted at him. “I mean that there’s two of them.”

Roger snorted again. “Why the fuck would I care about that? ‘Sides, not like any of it’s even real.”

Brian just stared again as Roger started up his drum rolls once more. “What?” he said finally, his voice a little too loud.

Roger paused. “I mean that none of it matters. Soulmates aren’t real.”

Oh.

Roger went back to his tuning again, leaving Brian to stand there and just let that sink in.

Roger didn’t believe in soulmates. Roger, the man he was about ninety percent sure was his bloodmate, didn’t believe in any of it.

_Oh._

  


He’d never been ashamed of his double marks; not really. They’d scared him, but he’d never been ashamed. It had taken time, though; time that Roger didn’t even know about and hours that still lingered in the back of his mind every time someone caught sight of his double mark and had something less than kind to say.

On July 20, 1967, he attended his first ever therapy appointment. 

It was no matter that he was half-sure he’d needed therapy his whole life. Nobody seemed to care about that. His twentieth birthday was the tipping point. Yesterday he’d guaranteed himself to be a freak, and today his parents were paying someone to tell him about it. 

“You know why you’re here, I take it,” his brand new therapist said gently. 

Her name was Sarah. She was pretty. Her office was spacious and daylit, and there were all sorts of fiddly little things laying around—little puzzle games, things to keep nervous hands occupied. 

“There’s something wrong with me,” he said, picking up a rubik’s cube. 

She shook her head. “No, Brian. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.” 

He huffed. 

“You’re referring to your marks, aren’t you? I can tell you right now that having double marks is much more common than you’d think.” 

He spun the cube until three green tiles lined up, then put it down. “I know,” he said. “One in around five thousand, right? It doesn’t seem that common to me.” 

She tilted her head. “You’ve done your research.” 

“Yeah.” 

“I suppose that research left out the fact that many people have more than one mate and continue to live perfectly happy lives.” 

He didn’t say anything. 

“Brian, I think we have a lot to talk about today, and maybe a lot to talk about next week if you want to come back. For right now I’m going to tell you in no uncertain terms that this isn’t the end of the world. I know it’s not what you were expecting to happen, but this does not mean you’ll never be happy. This is perfectly normal.” 

And he’d had to let that sink in for a moment.

She’d let him have his time, the two of them sitting in silence. It wasn’t indefinite. She tapped her pen against the paper slowly, studying him with carefully blank eyes.

“Have you always kept it covered?” she asked finally.

He nodded slowly. “I learned to.” 

Sarah nodded and jotted something down. 

“It’s not like I really need to. People are—you know how people can be.” He hesitated. “Sorry, my marks are—they’re men’s names. Is that going to be a problem for you?” 

Sarah shook her hand. “That’s not a problem.” 

He nodded, reassured. “Anyway—yeah, I thought something was wrong with me as a kid. I matched early the first time. 13th birthday.”

“Altered matching timelines are fairly common as well,” Sarah supplies. “There are specialists out there who can confirm it, but it’s likely that you’re on a seven-year cycle.”

Brian nods. “I know that now, but back then...I don’t know, first it was that and then I matched with another man on top of it. I suppose it was a lot.” 

“Do you feel that you wrongfully matched with him?” she asks softly. 

He shakes his head. “No. Not at all. And it didn’t cause me trouble in the beginning. Ignorant people have a problem with same-sex bonds, but ignorant people usually don’t even recognize my soulmate’s name as being male. I kept it covered up for the most part anyway.” 

“What’s your soulmate’s name?” 

“Farrokh,” he said softly. “I went to the library the day it appeared to look it up. It’s Persian. It means happy.”

She smiled at him sadly. “And your second mark?” 

“I turned twenty yesterday.” He tugged up his sleeve to reveal the two interlocked circles on the inside of his forearm. The first was silver, the familiar name written inside: _Farrokh Bulsara._ The second, newly-formed yesterday, was a soft sky blue. Inside was the name _John Deacon._

  


John Deacon.

Years in the future, he’d be cursing his name. Praising it, too, and whispering it sweetly, and occasionally moaning it in ecstasy, but.

John.

Soulmates—soulmates in the biblical sense, or rather soulmates as in the perfect link to your mind, body and soul all rolled into one—had always been described to him as just that: a link, or a match. Nobody had ever described how exactly that was, and since he’d never met another person with a split mark other than his matches themselves, he’d never been able to ask.

John is sharp. John is metallic. John is the kind of mind he can feel ticking away against his own, and just like with Roger he feels like all he has to do is just lean forward—just close that last little bit of distance—and everything will fit. The cogs will line up, the clocks will chime in harmony and the gears will click out the perfect time signature that he needs in order to make everything _sing_.

It’s no one small moment that shows him that.

No, it’s something about the way he and John work. It’s how they can study silently together for hours and always know when the other needs a break. It’s how John can hover over his shoulder and catch the tiniest error in his math, how Brian can squint at John’s notebook and somehow understand how the currents in the sketches will flow even if he doesn’t know what the circuit is supposed to do—it’s just something about the way they think.

When Brian is up all night squinting at his guitar’s guts where they’re strewn across the table and trying to remember whether he was supposed to be replacing the capacitor with a smaller or larger one, John is there emerging from his bedroom and rubbing sleep from his eyes to remind him of his earlier thought process. When John is hovering over the mixing booth late into the night it’s Brian who comes and brings a brightness back to his eyes with just a few flips of switches. When it’s their band, their family that gets screwed over by bad contracts and greedy managers, it’s Brian’s and John’s eyes that meet across the room and say _later. We’ll talk about this later, and we’ll fix it._

But all that comes later, anyway. John comes later; John comes last out of the four of them, their final missing piece.

In the meantime, Brian found Freddie—or rather, Freddie found him and Roger.

  


Smile had been good. _RogerandBrian_ had been good. The fucking had become a pattern. It had become a _good_ pattern. They were good together. 

Really good. 

“This isn’t a good idea,” Tim had told him. “You and Roger, fooling around. It’s going to backfire eventually.”

There was no real way to elegantly tell him that Roger could start playing the drums with his feet and writing songs about fucking cars and Brian wouldn’t care. 

They were _good._ Nothing was going to change that. 

It wasn’t just the sex, though the sex was phenomenal—and images flash through his mind of Roger sprawled against his sheets, Roger sitting on his desk, Roger meeting his eyes in the mirror as he pushes back and meets his thrusts—the sex is wonderful, but there was something more, some sort of bone-deep connection he couldn’t qualify or quite understand. 

He had inclinations about it. Of course he did. Nobody just _fit_ like they did. 

And his life was already full of oddities as it was. The two interlocking circles on his inner forearm spoke of as much (“Poor bastard,” Roger muttered one night while drunk, tracing the blue ring knowingly), and he knew enough to know that anything was possible.

He just didn’t wish it on Roger. 

They’d discussed it after their first time, laying in each other’s arms, Roger tracing his skin in a way that made the hair on the back of his neck prickle. 

“What are the odds,” Roger murmured softly, “that your John and my John are the same?”

“I don’t think they’re that high,” Brian replied. “Right? How many John Deacons do you think are in London?” 

“Bet you ten quid mine’s hotter than yours,” Roger teased.

“I’d be careful. I already have twice as many soulmates as you.” 

“You might have three times me at the rate you’re going. _You_ should be the one who’s careful about it.” 

And Brian had to bowl him over into the blankets at that. 

Roger was eating his words a few weeks later, though. Brian came to surprise him for his 20th birthday, balancing two cups of coffee he couldn’t afford in one hand as he rapped on the door to Roger’s apartment. The man in question opened it a long moment later, his face blank and vaguely shell-shocked as he took in the sight before him. 

Brian felt the smile fade from his face. “Alright, Rog? Having a good birthday so far?” 

“So far, yeah,” Roger said faintly, the odd expression not leaving his face. 

When he didn’t elaborate or move to let Brian in Brian frowned. “What is it, then? What’s the matter?” 

Roger blinked at him slowly. Wordlessly he pulled up his sleeve, displaying his forearm. A blue circle had appeared to interlock with the silver, a second name displayed inside. 

_Farrokh Bulsara_

Brian stared. 

It was one thing to share one name in common—one, they could write off as a coincidence. They couldn’t do that anymore; not so easily. Whoever John Deacon was, the odds that he had Brian and Roger’s names written on his arm had just skyrocketed. The likelihood that Farrokh Bulsara shared them was nearly certain. 

  


“Are you with the band?”

“Yeah,” Brian said over his shoulder, tucking his guitar case carefully between Roger’s piles of gear shoved into the back of the van. “That’s me. Brian.”

“Brian May,” he’d breathed outside a shitty bar in Shoreditch, voice reverent. “I’m a fan. I’ve been following you for a while. You and Roger.” 

“And Tim, yeah. Thanks, mate.” 

“My name is Freddie Bulsara.”

And Brian’s head had snapped up. “What?”

“Farrokh, rather. Freddie’s what I go by.”

Brian spins around to see a man standing before him, eyes hopeful and shoulders tense. He had to be nearly shorter than Roger but somehow he was taking up more space--and how, Brian didn’t know. It was something about how he commanded the air around him, as if he was magnetic. Brian couldn’t tear his eyes away. 

Freddie frowned. “You _are_ Brian May, right? Do you know me?”

“Farrokh Bulsara,” Brian said softly, an echo of all the times he and Roger had said that name to themselves. “Are you really…” 

Freddie nodded and silently pulled his sleeve up to his elbow, revealing two interlocked circles on the inside of his forearm, shimmering against his skin as they caught the light from the bar: the left was blue and _Roger Taylor_ was printed neatly inside, and there on the right was Brian’s own name, surrounded by a ring of silver. 

“Oh my god,” Brian whispered. 

Freddie laughed wetly. “Can I—”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Brian says quickly, pulling back his own sleeve. 

Freddie stared at the marks for a moment before laughing again, covering his mouth with his hand. The world’s axis tilted as he did and Brian couldn’t help but grin as the air pulsed with it, hitting his lungs that much sweeter, perfect enough that he felt high off a single breath. _His soulmate is happy._

“We’ll need to run inside to get Rog,” Brian said. “He’s been waiting for you for forever, you have no idea. He’ll be so excited.” 

“Are you and him…”

“We don’t,” Brian starts, then paused when Freddie’s face fell slightly. Hopefully he couldn’t feel the way Brian’s heart twisted at the question, but judging from his expression he probably could. “We’re not marked with each other. Not yet, anyway.” 

“It doesn’t matter either way,” Freddie said. “You two are perfect for each other. I knew from the moment I first saw you perform.” 

Brian smiled. “I think all three of us are going to be perfect for each other, actually,” he said softly. 

Freddie smiled back at him, a slow wave of contentment-hope-melancholy rolling through the air and hitting Brian’s brain like a heatwave, and it was all too easy to get lost in just taking him in. Being in his space resonated deep in his bones, comforting and _right,_ not so much the electric fizz of being near Roger but more the aching warmth of sun after winter. It was heady and comforting and perfect. 

  


Ever since Freddie has come into his life things have been different. He feels like he’s hyper aware of Freddie, just like he’s hyper aware of John and of Roger, but differently. It’s like he can feel his every feeling, or like he can taste his songs.

(“It’s like having a second brain,” Roger whispered to Brian in the dead of night. “We finish each other’s thoughts and sentences. I feel like I know what he’s thinking or something. Our ideas for the shop, for everything, they fit together perfectly.” And Brian had kissed him hard and quelled the jealousy in his chest over the fact that Roger, their nonbeliever, would so quickly turn to Freddie like a flower to the sun when—for lack of a mark—he wouldn’t give his bloodmate the same attention.

Because they were bloodmates. Weren’t they?)

Through it all, through all the pain, Freddie sank into his bones like a balm. He was always _there_ , sweet and quiet, whether Brian was slowly withering over Roger or longing for a mindmate he hadn’t met. He was always there.

He was there later in the studio, through every fight—hell, he started half of them, but he was just as quick to smooth them over. He was always there for Brian when Brian needed it most.

And he needed it often. Long days when he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed, even worse weekends where he couldn’t get himself to stop crying for no other reason than his own traitorous mind—he didn’t know he needed him until he had him.

He knows when Freddie’s happy and he loves to see him smile. He can feel his heart as if it’s pumping the air through the room when he’s writing music, and his voice makes him want to perform and to play and to become _better_ —to become the best.

And he can tell when Freddie’s sad. Of course he can.

Freddie is as prone to spending a day wasting in his own melancholy as Brian is. The difference is when Freddie does it it’s not just a side effect of his own existence. It has a name and a face.

In the early days, more often than not, that name was John Deacon.

It would come out of nowhere. Neither Brian nor Roger could ever really predict it. Some days Freddie would be fine with talking about him.

“You know Roger doesn’t believe that he and I are bloodmates?” Brian murmured to Freddie one afternoon, about a month after they’d met. 

Freddie hummed as he scratched out a line in his notebook. He could get closed off like this sometimes, his distance often mistaken for self-centered cruelty. Brian knew better; he could tell Freddie was as concerned as he was, could tell in the line of his shoulders and the quick movements of his pen. Already he could read his feelings as easily as if Freddie was telling him directly.

“He mentioned it last night. I don’t understand how he doesn’t get it.” 

“Well, I suppose it isn’t a sure thing quite yet,” Freddie said sympathetically. “You’re 23 years old, now. You just have a few years left to go before you know for sure.” 

“I’m on a latent cycle.”

“What?” Freddie had asked.

“My marks come every seven years, not every five. His mark won’t show up until I’m 27. What if I can’t even hold onto him that long?” Brian mumbled. 

Freddie sighed. “You listen to me, Brian May. You’ll have no trouble whatsoever holding onto that boy, and on the off-chance that you do me and John will help you out with it.”

“John isn’t even here, Freddie.” 

“He’ll be here soon enough.” 

“What makes you sure of that?” 

He shrugged. “Intuition. Don’t ask me how, but I feel like he’s coming.” 

“Do you think he’s your bloodmate?” Brian asked lowly. “It would make sense, wouldn’t it?”

Freddie recoiled, his left arm moving to cup his marks over his sleeve. For a long moment he seemed at a loss for words, and Brian had to wonder what he did wrong. But then Freddie turned abruptly back to his notebook and continued writing as if nothing happened. “It’s a bit early for that talk, don’t you think?” he asked loftily. “I have nearly a year before I need to be thinking about that.” 

Brian frowned. “You mean you don’t want a bloodmate?” 

“No. Nonsense. It’s not that.” 

But it had the thought weighing heavily on him—that Freddie wouldn’t want John, and that Roger didn’t want him. It was a nasty weight. 

Some days Freddie would just brush it off. Other days it wasn’t so easy.

Brian woke up to a horrible twisting feeling in his chest, a ghost of a feeling rising in the back of his throat, and got out of bed quickly knowing that something was simply _wrong_. And a moment later he’d found them: Roger huddled in the kitchen around Freddie’s shaking body, Freddie’s eyes wide and distant and bloodshot as he cried and cried.

He was wearing a t-shirt, his marks on full display, Roger and Brian’s circles intertwined and glittering slightly in the lamplight. He reached out with one hand as Brian got closer, and Brian didn’t even hesitate before sinking to the floor at his side.

“What if he’s horrible?” Freddie had sobbed. “What if he’s—if he’s vile and sleezy and a brute. What if—”

“He won’t be,” Roger said soothingly. “He won’t be. But either way it doesn’t matter, okay? You don’t have his mark, honey. You don’t even need to worry about him.”

Freddie just shook his head, crying even harder, and Brian’s heart broke.

He pulled him quickly into his chest, Roger still pressed against Freddie’s back. “John?” he murmured softly, meeting Roger’s eyes, and Roger nodded. “Freddie,” he started, voice low.

Freddie lurched as a tremor wracked his frame, his hair smelling like booze and cigarettes against Brian’s nose, and Brian made a mental note not to let them stay out clubbing if it would result in a meltdown like this.

“Love, he’s going to be just fine,” Brian murmured. “If he’s me and Roger’s other match then he’s going to have to put up with a lot, right? Patience of a saint.”

“Or a buggering _asshole_ ,” Freddie wailed. “A fucking—pushy pile of shit who only wants one thing and who’s owed a place in our lives just because—” he trailed off into another series of hiccups.

“He won’t be,” Brian soothed quickly. “But if he is, do you know what? Me and Rog will kick him right to the curb, because he has no right to any of our lives in the first place. Okay? If you don’t like him then at the first word from you he’ll be gone.”

The three of them spend a long time on the floor—how long, he isn’t sure, but judging from the way his joints creak they’d sat there for far longer than was advisable. Brian wouldn’t have moved for the world; not if that was what it took for Freddie’s sobs to finally slow to sniffles before he was silent entirely, burrowing into Brian’s warmth shyly and accepting Roger’s embrace with a grateful sigh.

  


Freddie isn’t always sad about John; once they start seeing eye to eye John actually becomes Freddie’s safe haven, the shelter of his wiry arms providing a peace and security that Brian envies only because he knows he himself is the source of Freddie’s sadness these days.

He can feel Freddie’s gaze on him, taking in his hollow cheeks and his sunken eyes and his flaking fingernails and his brittle hair. For the first time he wishes he couldn’t feel Freddie’s heartbreak projected into the back of his own head through the bizarre camera obscura of their bond. He can’t do anything about it, so he just ignores it, and a few minutes later Freddie leaves the room to seek out John’s steady calm once more.

But that comes later.

  


The thread of Freddie in the back of his head tastes like sorrow for a long time; not in the way that Brian would expect and not in the way that he knows he himself must taste. It’s a melancholy, a romantic drifting thing as changeable as the wind and the clouds.

They grow and shift around each other, and Roger and Freddie grow and shift around each other, and keeping the two of them out of trouble becomes a full-time job. And then John comes.

It takes him a while to figure John out. Some days he’s sure he still hasn’t quite managed to. John doesn’t taste sad, not at first. He doesn’t really taste one way or the other.

Their bond is much more logical than that.

Brian wasn’t sure what to expect from his mindmate. The details of each separate bond isn’t a well-documented science, and even less so because split matches are so uncommon. He’d had only one case to go off, and that was Roger and Freddie: shrewd business partners, always one step ahead of the other and completely in sync in their more mischievous moments; as prone to using their mind-bond for good as they were to use it for evil.

He wasn’t sure what to expect from his mindmate. Something like that, maybe.

John was different.

They didn’t talk much at first, John still struggling to stay afloat as the brand-new member of a well-established band and trying to sink into his new soulbond on top of it—and Roger hardly made that easy, not that John seemed to mind the way Roger always expressed his emotions loudly as could be and twice as brightly.

Brian and John sink into each other, eventually. They understand each other in the long silences between words and the shared peace of an afternoon spent in front of books and papers. They understand numbers, and they understand each other through them. It’s math; the four of them are math, and John knows how to balance that equation just like he knows that Brian does, too.

There’s a comfort in the coolness of it.

But that doesn’t help them when things turn sour. That doesn’t help them when the sadness creeps in: Freddie, shying away every time John reaches out, and John, who’s somehow understood the math behind bloodmates more rapidly than Roger has and yet, just like Brian, has refused to say anything about it. Instead he just doubles back on his own inferiority complex, buckles down and hushes up.

Maybe he and Brian aren’t so dissimilar after all.

But the melancholy gets to him, just like it always does. Freddie is _sad._ He can taste it in the air, and he knows what John is thinking but the utter weight of what Freddie is feeling is somehow heavier.

“I’m not telling you how he is,” Roger hisses at him in the entryway to the flat. It had taken him a week to become fiercely protective of John, a habit that never quite wears off.

Brian huffs. “Well, you have to know, don’t you? You have a literal connection to him.”

“So do you!”

“It’s different, Rog,” Brian argues. “You know that.”

“So?” Roger snaps, crossing his arms. “I’m not going to spy on my soulmate for you. I don’t care if you think it’ll fix this dumb weird tension between them or not.”

“Well I’m not going to let mine be miserable because of yours!” Brian snaps.

The two of them stand there, glaring and huffing at each other, locked in an inescapable standstill—two sides of a square pressing together if not for their mitered joints.

John would appreciate the math behind that.

But no—Roger isn’t an immovable object. Roger isn’t uncompromising. That’s wrong.

Roger is a stubborn bastard. It runs in his very blood, and Brian would know. He knows it like he knows the feeling of Roger’s pulse beneath his lips, like he knows the way Roger’s drums echo in his chest, like he knows what his sweat tastes like and how exactly to get his pulse racing within the span of fifteen seconds.

He knows Roger.

And Roger is a stubborn bastard at the best of times; that much is true. Roger refuses to see anything at all unless it’s written down on paper or on skin—

(“Whoever my bloodmate is, they must be insane,” Roger says, Brian’s come still cooling on his chest and sweat still drying on his forehead. His fingers twitch for a pack of cigarettes beside his bed before visibly holding off, and Brian knows it’s because he knows that Brian doesn’t like the smell, and he wants to light himself on fire a little bit.)

—just like he refuses to see what’s directly in front of him.

But he sees John.

John shrinks in on himself. He shrinks _visibly_ , and if Brian can see it then Roger must be suffocating under the weight of it. John needs—desperately he needs—so visibly that Brian aches. A simple brush of fingers as Brian passes him tea, the tension in his back as he pretends to sleep against Brian’s thigh, the warmth in his eyes as Freddie puts a hand on his shoulder before pulling away just as fast as if he’s burned himself against John’s skin.

John craves.

He needs a closeness that Brian doesn’t quite understand. He’s touch-starved, so visibly that it’s alarming.

Brian knows Roger is trying to fill in the gaps ( _always knows, hyper-aware of every twitch of Roger’s muscles, soothing comforting touching loving—)_ just like he knows that it’s not quite enough. It’s not quite what he wants, not quite who he wants it from, not quite the sweetness he seems to crave so much. But Roger does his best.

At the end of the day, Roger can still read John’s sadness. He can still lace their fingers together and tug John into Brian’s room, can still press him down into the mattress, John’s hair haloed out beside Brian’s thigh and the book he hastily set aside. He can still give him a teasing smirk and a long kiss and meet Brian’s eyes and _get it_ and bring a grin back to John’s face.

(And distantly, ever-so-distantly, he wishes that Roger would actively care for Brian that way and not just look after him subconsciously. Distantly, selfishly, he wishes he could command his attention.)

But no. Roger warms slowly to people; slowly, slowly, like a flower seeking the sun. He slowly learns how to trust, how to love, how to take claim and want. For all his cockiness and outgoingness, he still holds his true colors close to his heart beneath all the layers of silk and sequins.

He’s like Freddie that way.

And Brian would wait for him forever if he could, but he doesn’t have forever. He’s pretty sure Roger knows it, too. The concerned glances and prolonged silences can only be hidden for so long.

He’s coming to terms with the fact that he might not live to see Roger’s name appear on his arm.

The Sheer Heart Attack tour is hard. Roger stopped sleeping halfway through the Midwest. He doesn’t stop coming to Brian’s bed—he never stops that—but he shies away from Brian’s wandering hands and hungry lips. He keeps to himself until he thinks that Brian’s asleep, and then he wraps his arms around Brian’s chest like he’s a plank in a shipwreck.

On the nights that John is with them he’s not much different. John is. When John thinks Brian is asleep he cries.

“What is it?” Brian whispers finally, Roger’s breathing evened out with sleep.

John sniffles against Brian’s chest, then seems to realize that he’s revealed himself and shifts slowly. “What’s what?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Brian chides softly. He traces Roger’s fingers restlessly where they lay against his chest. “He hasn’t been the same since Cleveland. What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” John says quickly.

“Bullshit. Something had to have happened, or he wouldn’t be acting like this.”

“That’s what I’m telling you, Brian,” John says, his voice a little bit firmer. “Nothing happened. Nothing happened at all. He’s just so _sad.”_

And then they break free of the Midwest’s endless rolling plains, and then they make it to the East Coast, and then they’re on top of the world in New York City, and then in a blink of an eye but at the same time ever so gradually, painfully slowly, it all goes wrong at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I'll update (broad)casting your limelight soon! I'm working on updates, but have this in the meantime. It's been floating around on my hard drive in various forms for about a year now and has only recently begun taking shape. It's now just about three quarters of the way written, which I'm really happy about. Please let me know what you think!
> 
> You can also always come talk to me on tumblr @sweetestsight if you have any questions or prompts about this or anything else! My asks are always open B) Hope you're all doing well!


	2. John

His dad had died before John had turned fifteen, and sometimes he’s grateful for that fact. He’d never seen the mark on John’s arm; never seen the undeniable shape of the letters sloping within the silver circle that signified a soulmate. 

_Roger Taylor._

He’d never seen. 

He doesn’t know what his dad would think, not really. Maybe he would have disowned him; but then he thinks back on all the warm memories he has of his family before it’d been split apart by tragedy, and he feels guilty for even thinking it. His dad wouldn’t have cared. His mother never did. 

“You listen to me,” she’d said, crouching before him where he sat on the side of his bed and holding both of his hands on the morning of his fifteenth birthday. Her own mark was visible, three concentric circles shining against the skin of her forearm surrounding a name in white. “You listen. This doesn’t change a thing, sweetheart. Alright? Jules and I love you so, so much. This doesn’t change a thing.” 

It did change a thing. Oadby was small and the walls could talk. In church the congregation raised their hands and prayed for him—prayed for God to wipe his arm clean and take his soulmark away. 

Afterward, his mom served him a bowl of ice cream in the kitchen. They never went to church again.

  


It was no mystery what his next mark would say—what it would be _._ That doesn’t lower his anticipation, though.

Roger hardly helped.

“Four minutes left,” he’d said, glancing at his watch. He was sitting on John’s bed in his shitty student flat, his left hand holding John’s right, his own right arm sleeveless to show his marks on full display; _Farrokh Bulsara_ written neatly in one, and John’s own name in the other.

John looked down at the mark on his own arm—his and Roger’s shared mark—and swallowed. Roger squeezed his fingers.

“Are you scared?” Roger asked him.

“No.”

“It won’t hurt.”

“I know. I remember.” He licked his lips. “What if it’s not him?”

“If it’s not him, it’s not him. It doesn’t really matter.” Roger glanced at the watch again. “Three minutes to midnight.”

John sighed. “I just mean what will we do? Maybe it’s a different John entirely that he’s marked with.”

“So I’m marked with a different John too, then?” Roger asked flatly. “You and I are soulmates. Don’t start questioning that now.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can feel you,” Roger replied immediately. “I just know. Don’t you?”

He did. He still does. He’d known Roger on sight, practically instinctively. His audition had been a bit of a shock, to say the least. 

Yes, he knew that there was a Roger Taylor who played in a band in London. Yes, he knew that that band happened to frequent the same circles that he did. It may have been a big city, but the community of students was surprisingly small. Queen had played at his college once, though he barely remembered it. 

How many Roger Taylors were there in the world? Let alone in London?

That didn’t change the fact that the minute he walked into the little auditorium they’d booked for auditions he felt a dizzying sort of anticipation that had nothing to do with the bass in his hands. Upon his entrance, three heads snapped up. The man with dark hair licked his lips, and the curly-headed one shifted on his feet. 

“Hi. Thanks for coming,” the blond said warmly. “Tell us a little about yourself.” 

“My name’s John Deacon. I’m nineteen years old and I’m studying electrical engineering at Chelsea College.” He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. The three men were staring at him wide-eyed, frozen as if in shock. Honestly, it was making him a little uncomfortable. “Um, I started playing when I was around 12, I suppose. I’m from Oadby, and my first band was when I was still a schoolboy. I played guitar until our bassist quit...I’m sorry, was there anything in particular you wanted to know?” 

The dark-haired one shook his head, slack jawed. He seemed to have recovered the fastest out of the three of them. “John, darling,” he says. “Do you—” 

The curly-haired one elbowed him quickly, muttering something under his breath.

“Right, yes,” the dark-haired one said. “Sorry. Go ahead and play us something.” 

He frowned and did. 

And it went perfectly, really. It went better than he possibly could have expected. Something felt like it just clicked—something between him, his fingers, the air in the room, the energy of the men around him, _something_ was just working like it never had before. 

The four of them fit together. 

And then they all pause, and they took a breath, and the blonde turned to him with bright blue eyes and said, “John, I know this is inappropriate, but can I ask you about your soulmark?”

And it had all made sense.

He could practically taste Roger in the air that night, his excitement buzzing against John’s own nerves. It was the same way on the eve of his twentieth birthday. He could feel him when the clock struck midnight and dark shapes formed on John’s skin, coming together to form his mindmark, the blue circle entwined with the silver ring of his soulmark. The letters took a little longer to form.

_Brian May._

“See?” Roger had breathed. “You had nothing to worry about, after all.”

“I’ve got even more to worry about now,” John said dryly.

“What?”

“Brian May as a mindmate? Imagine.”

“You don’t have to imagine. It’s been him all along. You’ve always known it.”

He had.

He’d known from the instant he’d met him—from the instant he’d met all three of them, really. Roger may have had the only name he knew, but he was familiar with all three men on sight.

He and Brian hadn’t gotten along right off the bat, but he’d always known who he was on some intrinsic level. It hadn’t been anything logically founded or based in time. He’d simply looked at him, and he’d known.

Being around Brian in the beginning had been utterly new and unfamiliar. John could best liken it to being in a fishbowl. When Brian was nearby his entire world was cool and slow and somehow neater than it otherwise would have been. He could feel his presence though, the weight of his gaze lingering in the corners of his mind, and back then it hadn’t felt quite like companionship.

Back then it had made him uneasy.

It was in the long silences that they ended up thriving. Quiet study nights, the pauses between words during board meetings, the moment of hesitation before either one of them spoke—that was when he found he could read Brian better. That was what cemented things.

  


Nowadays it’s the silence that’s killing them. Nowadays it’s the struggle for words that’s making him feel like he can’t breathe.

Roger hasn’t stopped crying for eight hours or so. His eyes are red and swollen, his face practically raw from where he keeps wiping at it with his sleeves. His grief is palpable, and it’s making John want to peel off his own skin just to escape the feeling of it crawling across the back of his neck. He knows that the unease is doubling back on itself, their bond turning into a feedback loop of fear rather than the source of comfort it’s supposed to be.

He turns to Freddie instead—Freddie, who has his feet tucked up under his chin, his entire frame practically sinking into the shitty hospital chair. John can tell it’s going to make his neck start aching if he isn’t careful. He can tell it’s already causing a knot in the curve of his lower back. He can tell Freddie doesn’t notice.

Another wave of grief and guilt pours through Roger’s bond, flooding his soul until the excess is threatening to drown John, too. It hurts, and John just barely manages to hide a flinch. It doesn’t matter. Roger feels it all the same, if the new layer of guilt is any indication.

Roger stands abruptly. “I’ll be back,” croaks, scrubbing the heel of one hand over his eyes and smearing his own tears toward his temples. He looks exhausted and worn, and it’s only made worse by the harsh fluorescent lights of the waiting room.

“Where are you going?” John asks him.

“Smoke break. Don’t wait up.”

John knows that Roger ran out of smokes two hours ago. He doesn’t say anything about it.

He turns to Freddie instead—Freddie, whose eyes are dry only because he’s run out of tears. He’s unnaturally pale.

John wants to comfort him. He wishes that there was something he could say. The truth is he isn’t sure how Freddie will take it even if he does try. He can’t ask him if he’s alright because he already knows the answer. He can’t tell him it will be okay because he’s not sure if that’s true. He can barely think as it is, the smell of disinfectant and the dull murmurs of nurses bringing back a raw, childish panic that he’d long since thought he’d overcome. He’s frozen. He’s stuck.

Freddie breaks the silence for him. 

“Roger and I aren’t like you and Brian,” he says quietly, his voice rough.

John feels a frown forming on his own face. “Oh?”

“Yeah. You know it’s true, darling.” He tugs at a loose thread on the seam of his trousers, his voice flat and beaten down. “You know it just the way that I do. We work in a circle, don’t we?”

John thinks privately that they don’t work in any way at all, though he doesn’t say it. “What do you mean?” he asks instead.

“I mean that I can’t read you, but I can read Brian,” Freddie says. “I don’t understand your part in it, but I understand that when he’s with you he tries ten times harder because he doesn’t know what he wants—what you want from him. And it’s not your fault,” he adds quickly. “You do the same thing for him, don’t you? He asked me once, before you came along. He asked me what it’s like to have a mindmate.”

“What did you say?” John asks, his voice breathless.

“I told him the truth. That when I have an idea, Roger is the one that pushes it forward. When Roger is building momentum I double the speed. We’re not like you two, though. I know that now. We can’t work our way out of a problem to save our lives.”

“And Brian and I only get along when we have an issue to solve,” John mutters.

“At least you can solve it.” Freddie’s eyes water. “You can’t solve this, though. None of us can. I’m sorry.”

John sinks lower in his chair. He pointedly does not think of his mindmate, who doctors and surgeons are poking and prodding in the other room.

“Can you feel him?” he asks Freddie.

“Can you?” Freddie asks with a tired laugh.

“Of course not.”

Freddie wipes his eyes. “His bond is cold. They put him under. I can’t imagine what it’s like for Roger.”

John swallows hard. Bloodmates are a taboo subject even for the four of them, and he feels wary of pushing it. “So you think he and Roger are…”

“Of course they are, darling,” Freddie says tiredly. “As if they could ever ignore it.”

That hurts, in a way he wasn’t expecting. To hear his bloodmate say it so easily stings. Freddie is one to talk about ignored bonds; even now John can feel him aching for comfort, and his skin itches with it even as he resists it.

Freddie lets his hand rest on the edge of John’s chair. He turns his palm over slowly; an invitation. He is the only one of the four of them with a complete mark, and it still sends John’s mind spinning every time he sees it: the three intwined circles, the way they shine against his skin, the neat black typeset of the names inside each one.

“The four of us work as a circle,” Freddie says quietly. “We need each other. All four of us need each other. We’re fools not to see that.”

John swallows hard. He doesn’t say anything. He simply reaches out and takes Freddie’s left hand gently in his own, entwining their fingers and pressing their palms together. A rush of _good_ sweeps over him; a rush of _right._ The various pieces of his soul are scattered and suffering for it, but at least he has Freddie. At the very least, he has him.

He wraps his other arm around Freddie’s shoulders when Freddie doesn’t move away. Freddie only hesitates for a moment before leaning his head against John’s shoulder and tucking his face against his neck.

Brian’s mind is silent and frozen against his own, the gears of it gathering dust in a cold gloom. Roger is still fizzing and churning like a roughened sea; but he has Freddie, comforting and sweet, and that’s enough.

For now, it has to be.

  


Freddie was always skittish around him, right from the beginning.

Even when he was still twenty-four and John was nineteen, even when he only had two marks and John just had the one. Even before anything was confirmed, he was wary of John.

John ached to comfort him in those days, but he didn’t quite know how. His own aborted attempts seemed to hurt Freddie more than they helped him. Every once in a while he’d see Freddie reaching out to him from the corner of his eye, only to recoil before he even made contact.

That always stung.

What hurt even more was the way Freddie would fall into the others so seamlessly. He’d catch Freddie and Roger laughing together, Freddie’s hand resting on Roger’s arm as if he didn’t even notice it. He’d wake up on their couch, still drunk from a long night in the pub hours before, to the sight of Brian and Freddie in the kitchen, practically chest to chest as they whispered back and forth to one another.

If John came closer than a foot into Freddie’s space Freddie would move away.

He wasn’t even sure why, in the beginning. He knew they were bloodmates, but he wasn’t sure why that was such a bad thing. If anything, the lack of reason behind it made it feel worse. He’d spent his whole life thinking that Roger Taylor was his perfect match, only to realize that he actually had three instead of one—and _that_ was followed by the knowledge that his mindmate barely seemed to tolerate him, and his bloodmate rejected him outright.

Freddie’s twenty-fifth birthday hadn’t been celebrated. It had come just weeks after John’s mindmark had formed, and John half-expected that Freddie’s birthday would be similar: staying up late into the night to watch the mark appear as the clock rolled over into September fifth.

Instead, Brian and Freddie had gone out. They’d spent the entire night god knows where and finally emerged from Brian’s room on the evening of Freddie’s birthday, both of them horribly hungover, puffy-eyed and utterly exhausted. Freddie was wearing one of Brian’s oversized Henleys, all of the buttons undone to expose the dip between his collar bones, the sleeves rolled down to his fingertips.

John hadn’t seen his mark for months. When he finally did it was just a glance as Freddie did the dishes, his sleeves rolled up, the brilliant gold of his bloodmark glimmering through a few errant soap suds. John had known it would be there, wedged neatly below where Brian and Roger’s names were written in parallel, but the sight still had him drawing in a breath.

Freddie looked up, startled. He didn’t say a word when he saw John standing there, but he carefully turned his arm over so that the mark was no longer visible.

That had hurt, too.

  


It’s possible to reject a bond, though it’s uncommon. The process is difficult. It’s subconsciously done, a decision that’s made at someone’s very heart rather than on a mental level, and the truth is very few people resent their soulmate so deeply that all their love and longing for that person is erased. It’s for better or for worse, and John knows that.

John has seen his fair share of white marks. His mother’s was the first. The three rings were still just as vibrant as they’d always been, but one day as they drove to the hospital she’d pulled over on the side of the road and stared at the name on her arm, _Arthur Deacon_ suddenly written in white instead of black. The sound she’d let out had been all John needed to hear to inspire a fear that one day his mark would do the same—no matter how far away that day might be.

When Roger’s name had appeared on his arm the morning of his fifteenth birthday he’d been terrified of the thought. The idea that Roger might be hurt—might _die—_ before John even met him had haunted him. He’d grown out of it eventually, but it had taken a few years.

(When he finally met Roger in the flesh he realized the fear was ridiculous after all. The very notion that someone could wipe this person off the earth—this loud, brash person who lived and felt with his entire body, who broadcasted his every feeling across their bond like a runaway train flying straight off the rails—was completely ludicrous to him.)

He no longer feared the desaturation of names, then—no, what he feared was the desaturation of rings.

Rejected bonds are not common, but they happen.

There had been a woman in his church as a child named Ms. Charlotte who wore her marks like battle scars. The name inside was still black, but the three rings were bone-white even against the pallor of her skin. Her cheeks were sunken and her eyes were vaguely blank and hollow, but she used to carry sweets in her pocket and she’d always smile when she slipped John and Julie a handful before the services.

He asked his mum about her once.

“Sometimes people end up with soulmates who aren’t very nice,” his mum had said simply, settling down for lunch.

“But soulmates are perfect for you,” John insisted. “They’re a perfect fit, like you and dad.”

“Your mum and I were very lucky to find each other,” his dad supplied then, and he smiled at his soulmate across the table with a quirk to his mouth as if it was a private joke; his mum ducked her head even as she grinned. “Soulmates can be your perfect match or your counterpart. They’re meant to bring out the best in you and pull you back from your own bad habits.”

“So?” John asked, nonplussed.

“So sometimes the best people in the world can end up with the worst soulmates,” his dad finished. Julie squirmed in her highchair and he leaned forward to kiss the top of her head. “It’s nobody’s fault. If you end up with a soulmate who you can’t help and who only makes you worse, the best thing you can do for both of you is leave them.”

“Like Ms. Charlotte?”

His mum pursed her lips. “It’s not nice to ask about other people’s bonds, honey, but yes. Ms. Charlotte’s soulmate was a very mean person, and what she did was very difficult and very brave.”

“What did she do?”

“She left him. She pushed him away.”

  


Some days John is afraid of catching sight of Freddie’s bloodmark only to see that the gold ring has gone white and Freddie has finally rejected him. Other days he worries that despite how much Freddie resents him, they will remain bonded simply because Freddie still hopes that John will change—that John will become someone worthy of his love. He isn’t sure which one he fears more.

In the beginning he’d been terrified that Brian would reject their bond. They’d struggled to find common ground. He understands, now, that his fears were unfounded. They’d had their differences, but they were brought together by their similarities. They’d both been endlessly tantalized by the idea of what they could become—by how they could grow into each other.

He tells Brian that in the dead of night, with the machines beeping along to his heartbeat in the corner. “I love you,” he whispers along to the backtrack of Roger’s breathing. “I need you. Don’t leave us, alright? Don’t—don’t do this to me.”

He loves Brian for his mind.

He’s quick on his feet, always logical and precise even through his endless empathy. He’s sweet and patient and so, so kind, but when push comes to shove he’s right there where John is looking for the cleanest solution. He’s John’s mindmate and Freddie’s soulmate in equal measure: sympathetic at heart, his feelings running twelve leagues deep and his heart a gentle thing buried somewhere in the middle, but somehow that only compliments his tactician’s mind.

And he loves watching him with Roger—Roger who blows through all of their defenses as easily as breathing, the sheer passion of him sending Brian’s careful nature reeling and then spinning and then fizzing until the two of them simply collapse into one another. He loves Roger for the way he tackles every part of his life with equal zeal, and expects the same thing in return.

He loves the two of them for dragging him into the middle of it, into the space between them.

He even loves being the outside party looking in at his three bondmates, in some distant way. He loves how they balance each other out. Freddie fits with the two of them in a way that John only hopes he could, someday.

Freddie, for all his passion and chaos, brings a much-needed serenity to the other two. He brings a serenity to John; he brings a peace that John can’t quite quantify but certainly can’t live without. Being in proximity with him (always close but never quite touching, never quite enough) feels like standing in the sunshine. Freddie is _warm_ when he wants to be—when he isn’t pushing John away, when John isn’t stumbling backward to give him space.

He knows the others love each other. He knows all four of them love each other. Sometimes it doesn’t seem so simple, but he knows it’s the truth even in the harsher moments.

It gets to all of them, though.

Brian and Roger walked a thin, dangerous line even in the earlier days. They were always attached at the hip, even when they were fighting, and in the odd times when they pushed each other away they left the entire tangle of feelings between the four of them so cold and jumbled that there wasn’t a single one of them that didn’t seek support and comfort.

John went to his soulmate, in times like that.

It wasn’t long after Freddie’s twenty fifth birthday. John still startled sometimes when he caught sight of his own mindmark, not quite used to seeing it yet. Roger hadn’t gotten used to it, either; curled in John’s bed in the growing darkness, John’s arm resting on the sheets between them, he couldn’t seem to stop touching it. Static rushed up John’s spine and through the back of his brain every time he did.

“Do you love him?” he’d asked into the warm space between them.

Roger laughed. His hand closed over John’s marks, and it made his blood burn. “I hate his guts,” he said.

His words were betrayed by the slow roll of warmth that he’d unwittingly sent through their bond at the thought of Brian’s name alone. It bloomed across the back of John’s mind like a sunrise, golden and brilliant.

John’s lips twitched. “Me, too,” he said.

Roger didn’t ask which part he was agreeing with. He didn’t need to. He just pulled his hand away, absently tapping a rhythm against Brian’s name with gentle, fluttering fingertips.

John squirmed at the feeling of it. “You know it’s mutual,” he said softly, taking in the wistfulness of Roger’s face.

Roger glared halfheartedly. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Say things like that.”

“Why not? They’re true and you know it.”

“I don’t know it,” Roger huffed, and when John opened his mouth to argue he looked at him solemnly. “No, stop it. I don’t and neither do you, so just drop it.”

John frowned at him—at the way he was still tracing over Brian’s name as if he was entirely unaware he was even doing it. “You don’t think he does?” he tried. “You can’t feel it?”

“It’s just sex, John.”

It was not _just sex._ John had had _just sex_ before. He had also been dragged into Brian’s bedroom by Roger on more than one occasion, and he knew enough to know that what they were doing was absolutely not _just sex._ There was _just sex_ and then there was whatever Brian and Roger did, and John was more than aware of the difference.

It rested somewhere between the sum of the whole. The way they breathed words of love over John’s shoulder, the way they worked with and around and against each other; something about watching the two of them kiss inches from his face and feeling a roar of _something_ blare out from Roger’s skin; the whir of speed as Brian’s mind tried to keep up, and then as all conscious thought fell away entirely. It was one thing to watch them and quite another to be in the middle of it, and sometimes he had to laugh at the stupidity of it all—the two of them projecting their feelings for each other onto him and writing it off as all being about John. It was about him in some respect, but certainly not in the way they were making it out to be.

No, it wasn’t _just sex._ There was nothing _just anything_ about it.

He knew he’d projected all of that across the bond by the way that a frown flickers across Roger’s face. “John,” he warned.

“It’s nothing you don’t know,” John sighed. “What are you so afraid of?”

“Everything. What isn’t there to be afraid of?”

John just frowned, unyielding.

Roger huffed. “I could never be so lucky as to have Brian be—to _have_ him, alright? That’s not how my life works.”

“So you getting stuck with me was a moment of bad luck, then?” John asked dryly.

Roger punched him lightly in the arm. “Wanker. Shut up,” he said, his mouth twitching before he fell back into seriousness. “No, I’m—I was lucky enough to have you and Fred. I’m so, so lucky, and that’s enough for me.”

“He’s your bloodmate,” John insisted. “The marks don’t matter. You know that it’s true. You know I’m right.”

“I don’t.”

“Roger,” John said, and he waited until blue eyes snapped up to meet his own. “Don’t—don’t do this to him, alright?” His own longing and grief rose up, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide it so he didn’t even try. “Don’t push away what you know is the truth, because it won’t help either of you. It’ll only hurt him.”

“I’m sorry,” Roger said immediately. He let go of John’s arm in favor of pulling him closer, running his fingers through John’s hair as he tucked John’s head below his chin. “I didn’t think. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters.”

John just shook his head, a bubble of unhinged laughter making its way out of his chest. It was an ugly sound, raw and bloody. “He hasn’t rejected me yet, so I don’t see wh—”

“He’s not going to,” Roger said, his voice hard.

“He might.”

“He _won’t._ ” Roger pulled away just far enough to look into John’s eyes.

“I don’t see why he doesn’t,” John muttered. “At this point he might as well. At least I’m fairly sure now that Brian won’t, but that doesn’t—”

“Stop it,” Roger hissed, and John felt a real wave of anger roll off of him then. It wasn’t directed at himself, John realized belatedly, and that was almost a comfort. It was nice to know that Roger, at least, was on his side.

Roger turned his head gently until the two of them were staring directly at each other, sheltered in the warm space between the blankets. John took a moment to drink him in. He was beautiful—he always is, always will be—but it shined when he was like this, caught between gentle comfort and righteous fury.

“You’re my soulmate,” Roger told him, “and I love you. And Brian is fucking _entranced_ by you, and Freddie is scared right now and he’s trying to figure some things out but that doesn’t change the fact that he adores you. We all do. I have seen the kind of people who end up getting rejected by their bondmates, and you are _not_ one of them. We are fucking privileged to have you, and I’m going to spend every day of my life trying to become someone who could deserve to be loved by you. Do you understand me?”

“Roger, I’m not—”

“Do you understand me?”

Something in him trembled and caved under the weight of that even as he held Roger’s gaze. He could do nothing but nod silently.

Roger ducked his head and pressed their lips together, hard. He kissed him like he meant it; like he meant to keep him. For the first time John allowed himself to believe him.

  


Roger isn’t quite so level these days, and they all know it.

John doesn’t need to search to know that. He doesn’t need to reach out to feel the fear that’s emanating from Roger’s very being—that followed them across the Midwest like a shadow and flooded from him the moment that Brian finally collapsed, the whir of his thoughts going abruptly silent in Johns mind.

Whatever is happening, Roger is buckling under the weight. It’s scaring the shit out of him.

Brian goes into surgery and comes out with an IV needle coming out of his right arm and a bandage wrapped around his left, hiding his mark from sight. The doctor comes to them to verify that they’re his soulmates, and then he begins spouting horrible words like _hepatitis_ and _gangrene_ and _amputate_ and then Roger gets up and runs to the bathroom and begins retching and Freddie starts sobbing behind his hand and John thinks that he might die.

It doesn’t get better.

Roger doesn’t sleep at all. He spends his time holding Brian’s hand, and when he’s not doing that he’s staring at John’s soulmark where it’s visible below the sleeve of his t shirt as if Brian’s name will go white any minute—and when he’s not doing _that_ he’s out of the room, taking his grief and chaos with him.

And then John is alone with Freddie.

A bloodmark is a silly thing. John always thought they were a little arbitrary. After ten years of waiting, most people have found their soulmates before their final mark even appears. To love someone for their mind or soul is one thing, but to love them for their body has always seemed silly to him. A little pointless, really. Bloodmarks held little meaning to him before he’d met Freddie.

That doesn’t change the fact that right now Freddie really, really needs a hug. It’s itching under his skin, the need to hold and comfort impossible to ignore.

“Freddie,” he murmurs under his breath.

Freddie sniffles and wipes his eyes. His mark flashes out from beneath his sleeve when he does, the gold catching in the fluorescent lights.

Usually, Roger’s easy affection is enough to hold him together. When it isn’t Brian is there, a soothing constant.

Neither of them are here now, and he’s breaking apart. Roger is gone, Brian is unconscious, the smell of the hospital is bringing back memories of white marks and his mother crying at the kitchen table in the middle of the night, and Freddie is giving him a mile-wide berth.

He stands up abruptly and all but runs out of the room toward the bathroom, ignoring Freddie calling his name.

The door swings open beneath his touch. He immediately turns the cold water on full blast and sticks both his wrists under, his fingertips going numb as his blood cools. It barely takes a moment, and just when he thinks he’s beginning to calm down the door bursts open behind him.

“John,” Freddie says, meeting his eyes in the mirror.

John wipes his face against his own shoulder.

Freddie steps closer. “Deaky,” he says uncertainly.

John wishes he’d reach out. He wishes he’d step back and leave. “What?” he asks tiredly.

Freddie rests his hand on John’s shoulder. John shrugs him off, and when he looks up Freddie is watching him in the mirror, his eyes red and hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Freddie murmurs.

John just sighs again. He turns off the sink and leans against it, facing Freddie. “Why are we like this?” he asks, half to himself.

Freddie draws in a breath.

“I know what you want. We’re bloodmates,” he adds, and Freddie flinches. “Do you not want to be?”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

Freddie looks away.

John sighs. “You won’t let me come near you. I’d be happy to never come within arm’s reach of you again if that’s what you want—”

“You would?” Freddie asks skeptically.

“Of course I would,” John says, keeping his tone soft even as he rolls his eyes.

“Why?”

“Because I love you and I want you to be happy.”

Freddie frowns at him as if he doesn’t believe him.

“You don’t trust me?”

“I do,” Freddie says slowly, his face relaxing. “Of course I do.”

“Then tell me what’s going on,” John says, taking a step forward. “It’s been years. You won’t let me near you but you want me to be. Why?”

“You want to be close to me,” Freddie says. “I can tell. I don’t want to lead you on.”

“Lead me to what?”

Freddie looks at him tiredly. “You already know. I don’t want to be like Brian and Roger, John.”

“Then we won’t be.”

Freddie raises an eyebrow at him.

“We _won’t_ be, Freddie. All that matters to me is what you want, and right now I can’t keep ignoring that you want something that you won’t let me give you.”

“And what do _you_ want, John?”

John huffs a laugh that’s completely devoid of humor, pressing his still-cold hands against his eyelids. “Right now I want just one part of my soul to not feel like it’s being ripped to shreds.”

He doesn’t lower his arms. He presses his hands to his eyes until he sees abstract shapes and bright colors, and grounds himself in them.

And then he grounds himself in something else: a warm touch against his elbow, Freddie’s hands tugging his arms down and away from his face, that tiny bit of contact sending their bond spinning and glowing.

Freddie wraps his arms tightly around John’s waist, pulling him close. Without his platforms on he feels tiny, his hair tickling John’s nose, but he hugs like he’s twice that size. He sighs into John’s neck and holds him like he’s never going to let go, and warily John wraps his arms around his shoulders and presses him just as close.

Freddie sighs in contentment, comfort and satisfaction radiating off of him, and for the first time in what feels like years John can breathe. The sheer relief of it sends his eyes prickling again even as he ducks to hide his face against Freddie’s shoulder.

His entire world is up in the air. Not a thing about the future is certain—not Queen, not Brian, not a single thing. Not even this is a sure fact.

He has it right now, though. He has Freddie. In this moment, that’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to hold off on posting this, but I figured I might as well just get it out there! I don't have much news today, but I hope everyone is doing well. Let me know what you think of this! I always love to hear from you <3


	3. Roger

The day the rings on Winifred Taylor’s arms went white, Roger hadn’t quite understood what it meant. He still doesn’t, to this day; not exactly. He has no idea what exactly had happened that had made his mother’s marks fade. He’d been too afraid to ask, and he still is. 

“What does it mean?” he’d murmured to his mother. Clare was barely more than a baby, propped up on his lap and gurgling around a pacifier. He’d soothed her as best as he could with a hand on her back.

Their mum wiped her tears on the hem of her skirt and smiled at him with red-rimmed eyes. “It means we’re free,” she’d said simply.

And that was how Roger had learned about what soulmates were.

He hadn’t made it his mission to reject his own bonds.

He could hardly blame poor John for existing. That was what he’d told himself on his fifteenth birthday. He couldn’t condemn him just for being alive—and John was very much alive, if the black font within the silver circle around his name was any indication.

He wondered if John was younger than him or older. He wondered if John had gotten his own mark yet.

He wondered if he got as much shit about it as Roger did.

“Sometimes,” his mum said as she bandaged his scraped palms, “the best way to avoid confrontation is to blend in.”

“I’m not going to hide,” Roger grunted at her. His voice cracked as he did, but he ignored it. Being fifteen was hard.

“It’s not hiding, it’s protection.”

“It’s not protection, it’s fear. I’m not ashamed.”

She gave him a tired smile. Wrinkles were forming too quickly at the corners of her eyes. She kept her own mark hidden these days.

Roger didn’t.

He was tormented constantly. Having a male name was _wrong._ He’d endured his fair share of black eyes and bruised knuckles because of his unwillingness to blend in.

Eventually bruises formed scar tissue. He fought back, and he started winning.

After the fights, head pounding and bruises throbbing, he resettled the ice pack on his forehead and he thought about John. He couldn’t help himself. He wondered if he was tall or short. He wondered what music he listened to. He wondered about his voice and how it would feel when John was whispering directly into his ear. He wondered how he’d feel in his arms.

He yearned.

He hated himself for it sometimes. It was like he hadn’t learned a thing. A soulmate was a person made for you, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be a liability or a curse. John could just as easily be incited to torture him as he could be to love him.

John had no right to him.

John had no right to his soul, mind or body. John had no right to touch or even to get close. John had no right to presume that he understood who or what Roger was. The thought alone that someone could even presume such a thing disgusted him. It made his blood simmer and his head buzz.

No, Roger Taylor was raised to grow into his own skin and carry his own torch through the darkness of the world, and need no one and nothing. Roger Taylor was made to be a force of nature. Roger Taylor was forged to be his own person, and John Deacon played no necessary part in that.

Unfortunately those values didn’t quite hold up over time.

It took him five minutes to know that John Deacon was someone he’d love to devour.

He was quiet and gorgeous and self-assured. He played his bass like it was a piece of his soul, leaning back and forth on the balls of his feet as he went, the tip of his tongue trapped between his lips in concentration.

He smiled at them with a gap in his teeth and then played the dirtiest bass line Roger had ever heard, and that was it. He was gone, hook, line and sinker.

It wasn’t even his fault, and it had only worsened from there.

John drove like a grandma, but he took the corners just a shade too fast and accelerated through them sometimes when the road was empty as if he was driving the damned Nurburgring. He brought him 45s and biscuits and warm, familiar smiles. He built himself a home on the edge of Roger’s mind; a presence that was quiet and sweet and barely perceptible, but a presence all the same.

He took Roger out for ice cream when he was pissed off about arguing with Brian and breaking too many drumsticks and picking plaque off of teeth all day. He bought Roger an extra scoop and listened to him rant as they walked through the park. The way he licked pastel green mint chocolate chip off his own thumb as it dripped off the cone had Roger’s own mouth watering, his worries slipping out of his mind just like that.

He knocked on the door of their flat with a shitty movie and even shittier weed. He sprawled on Roger’s couch, leaning over just enough that their shoulders brushed with every careful movement of Roger’s hands, Roger struggling to focus on the joint in his hands and not the proximity of his best-friend-soulmate-whatever.

John’s sense of humor was a little weird, but Roger loved him for it. He found the oddest things funny. That night, it was the theory of ancient aliens.

 _“But why were they building these great structures?”_ the narrator said dramatically as the camera zoomed in on the pyramids, the shot blurry and poorly framed. _“Could it be that their shape promoted better radio transmission? Were they designed as signals abroad?”_

At his side, John cackled.

“Aliens again?” Freddie asked from the doorway, wandering over to collapse on Roger’s other side and wincing at the smoke in the air. “Good grief. Open a damned window.”

“Like you can talk, with all the incense you burn,” Roger countered, but he got up and did as he asked. “What do you think they look like, then?”

“Incense?”

“Aliens,” John clarified.

Freddie thought for a minute. “Giant bugs.”

John made a face.

“Praying mantis?” Roger asked.

“I don’t know what that is,” Freddie hummed.

“You know.” He gestured vaguely, holding his arms up like big pincers.

Realization dawned on Freddie’s face. “Ohh. The odd dragon-looking buggers, right?”

“How did you get that from…that?” John asked.

“Mindmates always win at charades.”

“That’s not true,” Brian called from the kitchen. A moment later he poked his head in through the doorway. “False statistic.”

“What do you think the statistical likelihood is that aliens look like praying mantises?” Roger asked him blandly.

Brian stared at him for a long moment, his mouth opening and then closing again like he was going to answer and then decided to actually think it through. “Seven million to zero.”

John frowned at the telly, his brow furrowing adorably, and Roger had to fight the urge to laugh. “That’s just zero,” John said after a beat.

Brian raised his eyebrows patronizingly. “Yes, it is. Well done, John.”

John picked a peanut out of the bowl on the table and flung it at Brian’s head. It missed by a good foot, whizzing past him and clattering against the floor in the hallway. Brian didn’t even blink, and the look on his face made Roger double over with laughter, his head spinning.

He clicked with John. That was the point. He clicked with him from the start to the very end and to the bit right in the middle: this bit, with Freddie following the strands of his imagination and gossip about pyramids and spaceships and alien lovers, the air glittering with John’s amusement all the while.

He clicked with Brian, who leaned against the doorway and laughed at something Freddie said, ever-present but always just out of reach. He didn’t know how, or if he did then he didn’t want to think about it.

He wasn’t marked with Brian.

He really didn’t think he would be, especially in the beginning. He had a million excuses for that line of thought; a million fake reasons.

In the earlier days it was because it was easier.

Fresh from the stagnant suburbia that had been his childhood and vibrating with the energy of the city around him, it had been easy to write off. He was still young and searching for the next big thing; the next place that he was supposed to be, the future that was calling his name. Memories of his childhood were still a little too fresh in his head.

He didn’t want someone who felt entitled to him, mind body and soul. He didn’t want a soulmate.

He sure wanted Brian, though.

During their first time Brian had held his hips in place and sucked at his neck and whispered _baby_ in his ear so softly that it had hurt. He was perfect, checking every single one of Roger’s boxes as if it was second nature.

It was easier to lie and tell himself that it was all in his head. Besides, he already had a soulmate. John’s name had been on his arm ever since he turned fifteen, and the thought that he might end up with a split bond hadn’t even crossed his mind.

“You don’t look forward to meeting him at all?” Brian had asked him once, about a month before his and Roger’s birthdays. Summer was rolling in hot and sticky, and it only made their own condition worse: sprawled out in Roger’s bed, sweating half from exertion and half from the heat, Roger aching to reach out and touch him if he wasn’t so wary of his body heat. Brian was like a damned furnace even in summer.

“That’s not what I said,” Roger told him flatly. He gave in finally, reaching out to trace the line of Brian’s collarbones.

Brian wasn’t so easily distracted. “You said that you don’t want to have to deal with a soulmate.”

“I said I don’t want to deal with a soulmate feeling like they have a claim on me. You’re misquoting me.”

Brian huffed. “Soulmates _don’t_ have a claim on you. They shouldn’t, anyway.”

Roger raised his eyebrows. He pointedly didn’t say anything about the burn in his blood every time he and Brian were touching, and the way that not ten minutes ago Brian had panted _mine_ into his skin and bitten his shoulder hard enough to bruise.

Because yeah, of course he knew who Brian was. He knows now, anyway. If the need to own and be owned wasn’t so all-consuming that he could no longer ignore it, then the simple rush of satisfaction every time their skin brushed would have been a dead giveaway.

It had only taken one time to suspect that Brian was his bloodmate. It had only taken six months to be absolutely sure of it, and yet at the same time utterly in denial.

There are other ways of knowing, now—ways to be sure.

He hadn’t believed it before the tour. Not quite, anyway. The four of them were starting to settle into themselves—and Roger wasn’t exactly ignorant to the fact that the more time he and Brian spent together, the better the whole mess of the four of them fit—and for a while things were almost good.

Only for a while.

It had started midway through Ohio. Brian stopped showing up for breakfast, and then he started begging off lunch. When he did eat it was bland toast and bits of apple and the occasional bowl of rice. Roger didn’t need to be a biologist to know that it wasn’t enough; that something was wrong.

He’d knocked on Freddie’s door two weeks in, worry twisting his gut and making him queasy.

“Roggie?” Freddie asked him as he opened the door, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “What is it?”

“What’s wrong with Brian?” he asked. He didn’t beat around it. There wasn’t any need to. Freddie would see through it, anyway.

Freddie’s eyes were suddenly wide. “What _is_ wrong with Brian?”

“You should know.”

“So should you,” Freddie said pointedly.

Roger only managed to hold his gaze for a few seconds before looking away, uncomfortable. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t give me that shit, dear. You know that I can see right through it.”

Roger turned to glare at him. “Look, if you’re just going to interrogate me then I’m going to go back to bed.”

Freddie rolled his eyes and huffed out a sigh. He reached out to snare Roger’s wrist in his hand, dragging him through the door and shutting it behind the two of them. He tugged Roger over to his bed, sat him down on the side and turned to the minibar. There was a bottle of champagne there for some reason, still about a third of the way empty, and Freddie poured them each a glass.

It was warm, but at least it was still fizzy. Roger sipped at it as Freddie sat down beside him, his robe riding up to flash his mark. His was the only complete one out of the four of them, and the sight of it still sent Roger’s chest clenching.

“What do you want to know, then?” Freddie asked him.

Roger sighed. “I just don’t get what’s going on. He’s always tired, he never wants to eat, he doesn’t—he just doesn’t seem _right._ Is he different? Is he sad or something?”

Freddie grimaces. “I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. He’s good at keeping things to himself.”

“Even his _soul_?”

“This might come as a surprise to you, Roger, but sometimes it’s possible _not_ to project your every thought across your bond.”

Roger rolls his eyes. “Like John minds.”

Freddie sits up slightly straighter at that. The tension in his spine would’ve gone unnoticed entirely if Roger didn’t know him so well. “If you want to talk about John, then you should know that he asked the same thing about _you_ yesterday.”

“What?” Roger asked flatly.

“He wanted to know if you were alright,” Freddie said, taking a delicate sip of his champagne. “Why I’ve been chosen as the go-between for all of you idiots, I’ll never understand…”

Roger nodded to his mark pointedly, and Freddie snorted.

“Other than that,” he amended.

“What did John want?” Roger asked. “You can’t just leave it at that.”

“Just what I said. He wanted to know how you were. Said you seemed sad.”

“I’m not sad.”

“Aren’t you?” Freddie asked him, raising his eyebrows.

And really, wasn’t it just like Freddie to cut straight to the heart of it?

He’s not happy. He wasn’t happy all tour, and he’s not happy now. How can he be?

Unease has been eating at his stomach for months now. He’s not one for nerves or anxiety; he’s always been well-versed at handling them. The feeling is new to him, and unfamiliar. He can’t help but be on edge, and of course John is picking up on it. Of course Freddie is.

Fat lot of good it did him.

What were the point of bloodbonds, anyway? What was the point of something like that if it just made him uneasy for months and shot a splitting bold of panic through his chest in the seconds before Brian collapsed onstage, narrowly avoiding crushing his guitar under him, his eyes rolled back into his head before he even hit the floor?

What was the point now, when Roger was utterly helpless and unable to do a single thing? What was the point of this horrible thing confirming what he already had an inkling about—that he was Brian’s and Brian’s was his and they were part of something _bigger_ —only to deny him any tools that he could use to help him?

One of the many reasons he’d quit medical school was because of the unease that came with looking at the teeth of cadavers all day. For the first time in his life he was thankful of that experience when he saw the mess of skin and blood below the bandage on Brian’s arm for the first time yesterday. He didn’t gag at the smell the way the others did.

The doctor had outlined the area in purple marker to chart the spread of the infection. The color contrasted horribly with the yellow of his skin and the grey of decaying flesh. He was rotting from the inside and Roger hadn’t even noticed—had let it go on for months. He wanted to scream.

“The hepatitis can be treated, though he’s in for a miserable month or two,” the doctor told them. “We’re more worried about the gangrene. A continued spread would be disastrous.”

“How bad is it?” Roger asked flatly. Behind him Freddie and John were leaning against each other, and Roger could at least be grateful for that—that despite all that was going wrong the two of them had at least sorted out their differences at long last.

“He could lose it,” the doctor said—quickly, like pulling off a bandaid. “It’s in his best interest to amputate it before it spreads to his shoulder.”

Roger isn’t squeamish. Roger went to medical school. The sight of cadavers and injuries and blood didn’t set him on edge in the slightest.

The idea of his bloodmate losing his arm did. His lithe wrists and graceful hands and the still incomplete mark on the inside of his forearm; a surgeon cutting it all off and tossing it aside—

He was running toward the bathroom before he could think. He managed to make it to the toilet before heaving up his lunch.

(He fucking loves Brian’s hands. He loves the way they feel, the hidden strength in them, the warm comfort of them holding him. His hands on Roger’s hips, cupping his face, stroking his hair, gripping his guitar—he loves them.

Brian was the one who’d told him not to quit his major. He was also one of the main reasons Roger had chosen to ignore that advice. Freddie had been the real tipping point in the end—Freddie who had waited patiently on the sofa and watched as Roger paced back and forth, gesturing wildly as he talked.

“It’s just not me,” he’d said, making another turn. “I can’t—I mean, I know I’m destined for more. We’re all destined for more. I can feel it.”

“Are you sure?” Freddie asked, his face utterly impassive.

Roger was sure. He’d known from the first second that he and Brian had started playing together, Brian’s graceful fingers flitting across his fretboard, warm hazel eyes flicking up to meet Roger’s own and follow his beat. He could feel the movements of his hands as if they were a part of the air itself, and all at once he had known.

“I’m sure,” he said, stopping in front of John.

Freddie didn’t even blink. “Then what are you doing studying dentistry, darling?” he asked him, and that was that.)

His days became a constant cycle of exhaustion, hope, depression and exhaustion again. The feeling of wrongness lingered. His stomach ached from nerves to the point that John had to plead with him to eat. Time slipped away.

He’d been looking forward to Brian’s twenty seventh birthday for years. Now, in the midst of all the pain, it slipped through the cracks.

By the time he remembered it was a week later and he was so tired that all he could do was lay his head against the mattress beside Brian’s thigh, playing with Brian’s fingers idly. Brian’s marks were covered up with bandages, the doctor doing all that he could to prevent the infection from spreading. The realization that Brian’s third mark had likely formed barely excited him. It didn’t feel fair to look at it when Brian wasn’t awake.

Besides, how likely was it that the infection had grown after all? That it had overcome the marks entirely and wiped John and Freddie’s names from Brian’s skin? Knowing their luck, the chances were high.

And then, all at once, it hit him.

It had been a week since Brian’s birthday. One week—Roger hadn’t just forgotten Brian’s twenty-seventh, he’d forgotten his own. _His twenty-fifth._

John had lent him a sweatshirt, and he hadn’t taken it off for three days. Its warmth and the smell of John’s shampoo were a much-needed comfort, but right now all he wanted was to have it off.

He grabbed the edge of the sleeve and tugged it quickly past his elbow, and his breath caught in his throat.

A golden circle nestled below the silver and blue ones; _Brian May_ written neatly inside _._

His free hand flew to cover his mouth as he let out a sob, staring at the mark. He could hardly believe it, especially after all these years. After everything the four of them had been through—after what they were _currently_ going through—and where was the justice in that? That just when everything is starting to make sense the rug is pulled out from under them? That the four of them—

“Rog?” Brian croaked.

He hadn’t moved, but his eyes were open and he was squinting at Roger blearily. His fingers were twitching as if he wanted to reach out but didn’t quite have the strength.

Roger swallowed down another sob. “Bri, look,” he says, his voice still choked. He stretched out his arm for Brian to see. “Look at it. I’ve got your name.”

“Don’t need to be so sad about it,” Brian teased, his voice slurring as his eyelids dipped, high as a kite on painkillers.

Roger laughed through his tears, and the hazy smile Brian sent him had a beam of warmth shining straight through his chest. “I’m not,” he got out. “I could never be, not when I have you.”

“Can I see mine?” Brian asked.

“Later. Once you get better and the bandages come off you can look at it all you want.”

Brian sighed softly, his eyes drifting back shut. “Rog?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry I missed your birthday.”

Roger laughed again. He wiped his eyes with the heel of one hand. “That’s alright, Bri.”

“Owe you a blowjob.”

“I missed your birthday too, so I think we owe each other blowjobs.”

Brian grinned sleepily, raising his eyebrows without opening his eyes. “G’n cash in.”

“It looks like you’re going to go to sleep,” Roger said.

“Nh-nh. G’n cash.”

“Alright,” Roger whispered. He raised Brian’s hand to his lips, brushing a kiss across his knuckles. “Okay. You get better and you can have all the damn blowjobs you want.”

In the future there will be plenty of time to explore it. There will be hours of it; long days and nights and lazy kisses. Everything will start to make sense all at once, and Roger will wonder why he’d never figured it out before.

There will be days in the studio when Roger can feel Brian’s exhaustion like a sinker line attached to the top of his spine, and he’ll know to drag him gently out of the building and into the car with a firm grip on his waist; John, two steps behind him and practically carrying an equally exhausted Freddie, will shoot down every single one of Brian’s arguments for working into the night with a tiny exasperated frown and a complete and utter lack of any kind of effort.

There will be frustrating, long hours on tour when Brian and Freddie will be pulled aside for endless interviews while the rhythm section goes completely ignored. Roger won’t be able to blame them, not really. Freddie and Brian are practically prodigies, and he knows firsthand how being with the two of them can be; how their thoughtful quietness is soothing and addictive when it has the chance to make itself known.

That won’t make it any less frustrating. John, always tuned into his moods, will feel the same way. Rather than pout about it like Roger is prone to doing, he’ll drag his soulmate upstairs and proceed to tease him to within an inch of his life, bringing him right to the edge over and over again before pulling him back again.

When Brian appears in the doorway an hour later, flushed and turned on and pissed off, Roger will just manage to laugh through his frustration. He’ll _definitely_ laugh when the interview finally airs on MTV later that night, Brian looking progressively more distracted and irritated as time goes by.

Even in the near future, there will be time.

Brian will spend most of his time in his room or on the sofa, following the doctor’s bedrest orders to a T. He’ll still be weak and he’ll still turn down food; the hepatitis will take a while to clear and then there will be other problems after it, the causes of which won’t be identified for another long few months.

He’ll be better, though. The bandage will be off his arm, and Roger will spend whole days laying beside him and kissing over the scar there gently; tracing his fingers over his own name on Brian’s arm just to watch the way Brian inhales sharply at the feeling of it.

“I can’t believe you never figured it out,” Brian will whisper around a shaky laugh.

Roger will smile and kiss him gently. “Of course I did,” he’ll reply. “I always knew.”

“You never said.”

“Neither did you.”

“I didn’t think you wanted me,” Brian will say honestly, his eyes wide and guarded.

“I thought it was too good to be true.”

“Was it?”

“Apparently not. You’re still too good for me, though.” He’ll kiss him again just to feel Brian’s smile against his lips.

“Maybe,” Brian will tease quietly. “I’m stuck with you anyway, though.”

And Roger will laugh. “Likewise,” he’ll say, and lean in again.

In the present he accepts a shitty hospital coffee and a kiss from Freddie as he enters the room. John follows him through the doorway, looking at Roger with weary, tired eyes, and Roger manages to quirk his lips into a smile. It only widens when John regards him with suspicion.

“Are you alright?” he asks quietly, looking, Roger over.

“Fine, yeah. I’m okay.”

John’s frown only deepens. He hates that he worries him like that. He wishes that he could do better for both of them; that they could live in a world where none of his friends ever stressed over him, and that they weren’t immediately suspicious when he said he’s okay.

It’s not a lie this time, though. He feels better, and it’s not just because of the new name on his arm. Somehow the world feels less cold. A weight has been lifted from his chest. He isn’t even sure what it is, but it feels good.

As if reading his mind John comes closer, tanging their fingers together before turning Roger’s hand over in his own. He looks to Roger as if asking for permission. At Roger’s wordless smile he tugs his sleeve up gently, his gasp of surprise nearly inevitable as the new mark is revealed. He runs a thumb over it as if half-expecting it to wipe off, and Roger shivers at the feeling.

Freddie leans over his shoulder, his breath warm against Roger’s cheek. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and it’s almost enough time for Roger to begin to worry about his reaction.

But then all at once he’s looking up, smiling at Roger like the sun coming out. Roger lets out a slow breath and leans into him, their heads resting together even as John lets out a giddy little laugh.

Freddie had always had a complicated relationship with the idea of bloodmates.

It wasn’t really Roger’s business. Or it was, maybe, in a way. If he asked about it Freddie probably would have told him, but Roger wasn’t quite that brave. He still isn’t.

Still, Freddie had always been more afraid of finding John than he was eager for it, and Roger knew that well enough. He’d thought that things would get better once they found John, but it almost made things worse. Roger hadn’t been there when Freddie had gotten his mark, but from what little Brian had said about it he knew it hadn’t been good. It was a bad enough sign that Freddie chose to spend his twenty-fifth birthday isolated with Brian than celebrating with the rest of them.

It wasn’t that Freddie didn’t want any marks at all. He reveled in his bonds with Brian and Roger. It was the specific concept of bloodmates that he couldn’t seem to stand.

And Freddie never took anyone home from the club.

Roger wasn’t quite sure why, in all honesty. Maybe he thought it would be rude to do such a thing in front of one of his soulmates—but that logic never quite stood up, did it? After all, Roger was fucking around with Brian on the regular and everyone knew it; Brian, who was Freddie’s soulmate and not Roger’s. And Freddie never seemed to mind, so of course Roger wouldn’t hold it against him if he went and invited a stranger home.

He could ignore the burn of the jealousy, anyway.

It didn’t matter in the end, though. Freddie never took anyone home. He never kissed anyone other than Roger—and aren’t those cherished memories? Freddie under flashing club lights, Freddie pressed against his chest, Freddie grinning and glassy-eyed, Freddie licking into his mouth slowly and oh so sure of himself while around them people whistled and leered.

Those were the good nights. The bad ones were more common, especially after Freddie turned twenty-five. More often than not everything would be fine until the two of them made it back to the flat. Then it would all go downhill.

Eventually enough became enough.

“It’s John, isn’t it?” Roger asked him quietly.

They were sat side-by-side on the parlor windowsill, passing Roger’s last cigarette back and forth. Roger was the only one smoking it; Freddie had a habit of taking it and then forgetting it was there and letting the cherry leave long columns of ash dangling to fall onto delicate clothes. He was wet-eyed and distant that night, barely focused on the task in front of him. Roger tapped his shoulder lightly, and Freddie started as he handed the cigarette back to him.

“What was that, dear?”

“Your mark,” Roger said, his impatience seeping through his light tone. “I’ve seen it. I know it’s John.”

“Of course it’s John,” Freddie huffed.

“That’s why you’re so upset?”

Freddie was silent for a long beat. He crossed his arms over his chest, but it looked more like he was trying to hug himself than anything. “Look, it’s not about him,” he murmured finally. “We haven’t even found him yet. I can’t judge him like that.”

“It’s about the mark, then,” Roger guessed. “Is that it? You don’t want a bloodmate?”

Freddie turned to look at him so quickly that Roger was worried he’d give himself whiplash.

“I’m sorry,” Roger rushed to add. “I shouldn’t ask something like—”

“I’m not a prude, now am I?” Freddie said dismissively, waving a hand. “I spend enough time with you lot.”

“I never said you were,” Roger told him, lost.

Freddie sighed. “Maybe you should, then. I don’t know. I just don’t know how to feel about it. I’m not—I just don’t want…that. For someone to feel obligated to it. Not with me.”

“I hardly think anyone could see sex with you as an obligation,” Roger said dryly.

Freddie flinched. “Entitled, then,” he powered on. “I mean, it’s ridiculous. I’ve never even met the man and now he has some right to me just because his name is on my arm?”

“He doesn’t,” Roger said quickly.

“He does. Doesn’t he?”

“Of course not. Nobody has a right to make you do anything you don’t want to.” He huffed out a laugh. “The state of our chores around here is proof of that.”

“Pot, kettle,” Freddie said tiredly. “Thanks, anyway. I can’t help but worry about it, though. It’s the truth, really. A bloodmate is an obligation.”

“Is a mindmate?” Roger asked casually, his tone hiding how his heart is suddenly in his throat.

Freddie looked at him sharply. “That’s different and you know it.”

It is.

His bond with Freddie was something he sunk into readily. In the emotional tumult of his life being near his mindmate was like sinking into a warm bath. To have someone who just understands what he’s trying to say without him even having to articulate it—well, it’s intoxicating.

That’s not to say he doesn’t love talking to Brian and John, or that he didn’t in the beginning. He did, and he still does. Of course he does. Freddie is just different.

In the early days Brian and John had seemed to practically fear each other. They handled one another with white gloves, and Roger wasn’t ever quite sure why. Most likely it was shyness; John was still trying to find his footing as the newest member of the band, let alone as the late-comer to their four-way bond. Brian’s caution around him certainly hadn’t helped.

It hadn’t lasted long, though.

It hadn’t lasted long before it turned into something else: bickering at the best of times, and bitter silences at the worst. For two people who were supposed to understand each other’s ideas so easily they spent more time arguing than they did doing anything else.

Information about split bonds was limited, even in the medical community. Roger had been forced instead to draw on old conversations with his mother, her white mark long since covered by long sleeves and thick arm bands.

Bondmates were either your missing part or your complimentary piece. Sometimes complimentary parts didn’t always work in harmony, though. Sometimes to bring out the best in one another you had to butt heads.

Brian and John butted heads, alright. They butted heads for about three months straight, and then one day the tone of it changed from cold to burning hot.

Roger is about ninety percent sure it had something to do with the fact that John was now joining them in the bedroom.

The point is that through all of it—all the chaos, the touring, the long studio sessions and arguing and fighting—Freddie was there, right in the middle, the proverbial shelter in the storm. Even from the early days he was a source of endless comfort, and a much needed one at that.

He’s a source of comfort now, when Brian is only just beginning to heal and when it feels like everyone is still walking on eggshells. At least Roger has that knowledge. At least he knows that if he falls, Freddie will catch him. Freddie will be there.

Distantly, he wonders if Freddie feels the same way about him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well guys, I'm back from having gone without my laptop charger for a few days! Not many updates on my life for you all. I've been jobhunting, painting, hiking, eating too many sunflower seeds, drinking too much water to counteract all the salt from the sunflower seeds, and that's about it. 
> 
> I have a new meme blog if you want to follow that. The url is queeme-machine, and it'll basically be the same kind of content I used to post on justqueenthoughts. Hope you're all doing well! Let me know what you think of this one. And as always, thanks for everything. I love every single one of you :-)


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